Yeah, I'm remaking another pre-Forumpocalypse thread. mainly because I want to show my stuff off, but there's plenty of crafty people on the forum, so might as well have a thread to show stuff off in. You've made something cool? Post pictures of it!

I has chainmail dice bag.

There's quite a few mistakes in it, especially at the bottom, but meh. Pretty good for my first bit of proper work with mail. To give an idea of its size, there's 39 D6es in there, and it looks like it can hold at least that amount again.

Here's my Maille Artisans profile you can get to in my info; it has some of the stuff I've made in it. Also, here's a couple other things I've linked on the forums before:

TZH Bracelet....I have a bad memory, but I think I sent this to forum member Kitsune...maybe? I don't remember >.>

Here's a dice bag I made for Sammie, it's only meant to hold a set or two of dice. If I remember right the CG stands for Cybergeneration which is a RP system. I'm really proud of the bottom of this bag cause it's entirely symmetrical, but to make it fit with the European 6-1 weave, I had to invent a 6-1 circular pattern, which wasn't too hard or complex, but interesting to try when you don't have any instructions to go by and are just winging it:

I wish I could find a picture of my girlfriend's necklace I made. I'm most proud of it, 'cause I made a nice Jens Pend weave with some very tiny rings using pure silver, none of that 98% sterling crap, but real freaking choke a werewolf with it silver.

It really just depends on what you're making, there's several things that will make your time vary:

1. Size of what you're making. Usually, something like a shirt will take a ton of more time than say a bracelet. That much I'm sure is obvious though.

2. What weave you decide to use for your item. Some weaves are very complex and time consuming.

3. Size of the rings you decide to use for your weave. Some maniacs/masochists make what's called MicroMaille <clickey

That tiny little patch probably would take me an hour and a half to make, much longer if I had to make the rings, which is point:

4. Whether you make your own rings or not. Most of the early stuff I made was with fencing wire and copper hanging wire wrapped around knitting needles, I wrangled up at Walmart for cheap. I didn't have a professional set-up though and started opting to buy my rings cut which are still fairly cheap (depending on what metal you use)

5. What metal you use. Some metals are very maelleable, others are very resistant to bending and it takes longer to put a single ring in place; for example, stainless steel is harder to work with than aluminum. There's not a huge difference between each ring, but when you're working with hundreds of rings, just a second longer can build up quick.

6. Last is just experience and practice at weaving. One thing I really love about making chainmaille is that once you have a pattern down you can just go into autopilot and watch TV or a movie or whatever while making it.

Sorry for the rant....chainmaille will make me do that. >.>

Edit: Reading over my post seemed kind of discouraging, so for the record I'd like to say that most weaves are actually very simple, and if you work with decent sized rings, it goes by pretty quick. The first dice bag in my MAIL profile you can see that is just like Cheez's probably took me 4-6 hours (itís been years, so I donít exactly remember) from coiling the wire, cutting the coils into rings, and weaving the bag; and that was with very little experience. Now that Iím pretty decent at it, I bet I could make a bag just like that one in a couple hours with bought rings

Also, I think it would be pretty cool to be able to make chainmail stuff, dicebags especially, but I don't really have any kind of supplies place anywhere near here at all.

If you have a Walmart or Home Depot anywhere around then you can more than likely get wire tools and all, and for under $50

Here's a really basic Beginners Guide with a list of material you'll need. Alternatively you can buy an 8mm knitting needle instead of a 5/16" diameter metal rod, your coils will just be shorter. The galvanized wire in my area is only sold in 14gauge which is a thicker wire, just ask if they sell fencing wire as that's what it's more commonly known as.

To buy pre-cut rings you can order here: The Ring Lord which is reasonably priced. If you have like $10 to spare and want to forgo the making rings process(which means don't bother buying anything else but pliers) you can get some rings there to play around with. I would recommend the 3/8" 14ga galvy rings, they're a great size for beginners and are sold on that site for $3.90 a pound, you'll likely spend more money on shipping than rings.

I have never really tried to make anything like anything in this thread. The most thing I've ever really made was I turned an old pair of soccer socks into these cool armbands... Bout it. Oh, and cooking, but that doesn't really count.

Logged

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